“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. Nothing is going to get better. It's not,” one verse states.

It was one of many memories that Greg and Teresa Short share about their exceptionally gifted daughter.

At age 3, Sierra knew the name of a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet and was reading at a third-grade level.

Sierra's preschool teacher had to cover the words written below pictures on flash cards because she was reading them in seconds.

By age 7 Sierra was a college-level reader and subscribed to National Geographic. Her mom first ordered the children's version of the magazine, but it was just not challenging enough.

Now Sierra is 14 and about to become a freshman — in college, that is, not high school.

In late August, she heads off to Mary Baldwin College, an elite all-female school in Staunton, Va., in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Then in the spring of 2017, when most students her age will be graduating from high school, Sierra is scheduled to graduate with a bachelor's degree and an eye toward grad school.

Though she has yet to declare a major, Sierra is ready for a new adventure and new academic challenges. She has a 4.63 weighted grade-point average in high school classes.

“I'm ready (academically),” she said. “When I visited (the college), I sat in a biology class … and I knew a lot of what they were learning.”

She said she has done well on Advanced Placement classes and looks forward to the challenges college has to offer.

■ ■ ■

Though she should be about to complete her eighth-grade year, Sierra is actually a freshman at Forest High School. She skipped sixth grade at Cornerstone School.

A year ago, Sierra scored 1,860 on her SAT. After Mary Baldwin College officials interviewed her and her family, Sierra was accepted into the school's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted, or PEG.

Some parents might be uncomfortable sending their child off to college at such a young age, but this school has been catering to the exceptionally gifted for 28 years.

The Virginia school has a dorm for some the nation's most gifted girls, ages 13 to 15, and special counselors and support programs just for them.

There are 70 students — they call themselves PEGs — in the program. They attend classes with traditional students ages 18 to 22. The girls must sign out of the dorm each time they leave.

“It is mandatory that they are supervised in the dorm (until age 16),” said Teresa Short, Sierra's mother.

The program is designed to meet the needs of the exceptionally gifted, defined by experts as students with IQ scores between 160 and 179.

Sierra has been taking Advanced Placement (AP) classes at Forest and, as an experiment, even took one AP final exam without taking the class. The results aren't back yet.

Genetics seem to be one of the big contributors to Sierra's extreme intellect. Her father breezed through college and now works as a nursing anesthetist.

Her grandfather, Don Short Jr., went to UCLA at age 16, obtained a doctorate in math topology and became dean of the College of Science at San Diego State University.

Sierra's great-grandfather, Don Short Sr., graduated from high school two years early and became a civil engineer.

Ironically, Sierra will never earn a high school diploma because she is skipping straight to college. Mary Baldwin accepts gifted students before they earn diplomas.

Family members discussed the pros and cons of Sierra leaving for college and decided she could thrive there.

In the end, it was Sierra's decision. She wanted to go. It is, Sierra noted, a dream come true.

As she awaits her new adventure, Sierra is reading Richard Dawkins' “The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution.”

■ ■ ■

Margaret Bivans, associate director of early college admissions at Mary Baldwin, said the 70 PEG students make up slightly less than 10 percent of the student body.

Bivans said the school carefully analyzes each PEG applicant to determine if they will be a good fit for the school.

Test scores actually are not the main admissions factor. Many exceptional gifted students do not have perfect academic records. Some have even had disciplinary issues, and a few have ended up in alternative schools.

Bivans said many exceptionally gifted students are so bored in traditional middle school programs they underachieve and often have disciplinary problems.

“In the gifted world, these students often act out when they are under-challenged,” said Bivans, who graduated from Mary Baldwin in 2010.

The Short family says Sierra gets extremely frustrated at school if she is not learning something new. When she fails to get enough intellectual stimulation, she gets home from school and heads straight for the computer to search for stimulating reading material.

Research has shown that learning is what drives exceptionally gifted students. If a student is not pushed into higher grades, he or she becomes disconnected and socialization suffers.

According to the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, studies show that acceleration — skipping grades — has led to positive results for gifted students.

Miraca U.M. Gross, a known researcher on the subject, wrote an article in the winter of 2000 titled “Understanding Our Gifted.”

The research revealed that gifted students who were not accelerated, or moved up a grade or two, often underachieved to a point where, paradoxically, they had to be retained a grade.

By contrast, gifted children who were radically accelerated registered higher motivation and reported “that pressure to underachieve for peer acceptance” diminished greatly.

The Florida Department of Education has examined the issue and has included a document about “Acceleration of Gifted Students” on its website.

It states, among other things, that educators need to find ways to accelerate the curriculum for gifted students, who achieve much more when challenged and are happier because they are learning.

■ ■ ■

Mary Baldwin College officials understand that young girls need to socialize with students their own age. To that end, the school has PEG socials with Virginia-area military academies and boarding schools.

Sierra said she went to middle school dances and gatherings, but she did not go to the homecoming dance at Forest.

Sierra said while she will enjoy socials with students her own age, she is most intrigued about socializing with other gifted students from around the world.

Bivans said the girls are also dependent on Mary Baldwin staff. After all, they can't even drive; how will then get to orthodontist and doctor appointments, or even a store to buy supplies?

The girls all have an 11 p.m. curfew. They are housed in a secure dorm with six adult resident advisers.

“The girls can participate in any part of college life,” said Bivans. Some join the college's Division III sports teams, and many end up as officers on the Student Government Association board.

The annual cost for a PEG student is: $28,000 for tuition, $8,500 for housing and a $1,200 PEG fee.

Like nearly every PEG in the program, Sierra gets a $16,500 federal merit scholarship. Teresa Short said scholarships and the Florida Pre-Paid college program cover the rest of the tuition, leaving the family to pay for housing and the PEG fee.

“The average grade-point average for a PEG in their first year is 2.5,” Bivans said.

Bivans said out of every 30 PEGs who join each year, only two do not make it the entire year. About three more drop out after freshman year or during sophomore year, usually after turning 16. Some choose to attend college closer to home.

Roughly 24 of the 30 freshmen end up graduating from Mary Baldwin.

■ ■ ■

T.J. Forero, 15, of Raliegh, N.C., is finishing her first year as a PEG. She plays on the school soccer team as well.

T.J. said her advice to Sierra is to properly manage her time.

“I wasn't expecting classes to be as hard as they are,” she said.

Twins Alora and Brittan Wogsland, 15, of Nashville, Tenn., cautioned Sierra to never tell the older students she is a PEG. Some of the older students treat PEGs badly, often using the smarter ones for free tutoring and test help.

Some older girls just don't like the young girls because they get so much support from Mary Baldwin staff during their first two years.

“But a lot of the (traditional students) are nice,” Brittan said. “Whatever you do, don't let it get to you.”

“Many of the PEGs want to try to blend in on campus,” Bivans noted.

Brittan said most PEGs are too focused on school to really miss their family and friends back home. Plus, with today's technology — Twitter, Facebook and cellphones — family and friends are always within reach.

Bivans remembered that when she was a traditional undergraduate she never knew that her lab partner was a PEG until one night at the library. It was 11:15 p.m. and the girl yelled “I missed my curfew” and ran toward the PEG dormitory.

Bivans said most of the PEGs are treated like any other student.

■ ■ ■

Sierra said she will miss the family dog — Zorro, an Australian shepherd — the most.

Her biggest fear is that she will no longer be the brightest 14-year-old at her school and will feel like she is only average.

But she is excited to go learn. She believes she is ready. Sierra discusses issues like an intellectual twice her age.

“I wouldn't let her go unless I was positive that she was mature and responsible,” Teresa Short said.

Greg, Sierra's father and hunting partner, said he may have had a different opinion if not for the secured dorms.

Since Sierra is an avid hunter, she hopes she is not ostracized. She has killed squirrels.

“After all, our (Mary Baldwin College's) mascot is Gladys the Fighting Squirrel,” Sierra said with a laugh. “I think it will be fun.”

Though sad to see his daughter leave, Greg Short knows it is best that she reach her potential.

“You know when some parents talk about how their teenager thinks they know it all?” he asked. “Try living with one that actually does know it all.”

Contact Joe Callahan at 867-4113 or joe.callahan@ocala.com. Follow him on Twitter at JoeOcalaNews.

<p>Teresa Short had a migraine headache a decade ago. It was so intense she had to lie down until the pain subsided.</p><p>Sitting nearby, her daughter — 4-year-old Sierra — read Dr. Seuss' “The Lorax” aloud, cover to cover.</p><p>“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. Nothing is going to get better. It's not,” one verse states.</p><p>It was one of many memories that Greg and Teresa Short share about their exceptionally gifted daughter.</p><p>At age 3, Sierra knew the name of a dinosaur for every letter of the alphabet and was reading at a third-grade level.</p><p>Sierra's preschool teacher had to cover the words written below pictures on flash cards because she was reading them in seconds.</p><p>By age 7 Sierra was a college-level reader and subscribed to National Geographic. Her mom first ordered the children's version of the magazine, but it was just not challenging enough.</p><p>Now Sierra is 14 and about to become a freshman — in college, that is, not high school.</p><p>In late August, she heads off to Mary Baldwin College, an elite all-female school in Staunton, Va., in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.</p><p>Then in the spring of 2017, when most students her age will be graduating from high school, Sierra is scheduled to graduate with a bachelor's degree and an eye toward grad school.</p><p>Though she has yet to declare a major, Sierra is ready for a new adventure and new academic challenges. She has a 4.63 weighted grade-point average in high school classes.</p><p>“I'm ready (academically),” she said. “When I visited (the college), I sat in a biology class … and I knew a lot of what they were learning.”</p><p>She said she has done well on Advanced Placement classes and looks forward to the challenges college has to offer.</p><p>■ ■ ■</p><p>Though she should be about to complete her eighth-grade year, Sierra is actually a freshman at Forest High School. She skipped sixth grade at Cornerstone School.</p><p>A year ago, Sierra scored 1,860 on her SAT. After Mary Baldwin College officials interviewed her and her family, Sierra was accepted into the school's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted, or PEG.</p><p>Some parents might be uncomfortable sending their child off to college at such a young age, but this school has been catering to the exceptionally gifted for 28 years.</p><p>The Virginia school has a dorm for some the nation's most gifted girls, ages 13 to 15, and special counselors and support programs just for them.</p><p>There are 70 students — they call themselves PEGs — in the program. They attend classes with traditional students ages 18 to 22. The girls must sign out of the dorm each time they leave.</p><p>“It is mandatory that they are supervised in the dorm (until age 16),” said Teresa Short, Sierra's mother.</p><p>The program is designed to meet the needs of the exceptionally gifted, defined by experts as students with IQ scores between 160 and 179.</p><p>Sierra has been taking Advanced Placement (AP) classes at Forest and, as an experiment, even took one AP final exam without taking the class. The results aren't back yet.</p><p>Genetics seem to be one of the big contributors to Sierra's extreme intellect. Her father breezed through college and now works as a nursing anesthetist.</p><p>Her grandfather, Don Short Jr., went to UCLA at age 16, obtained a doctorate in math topology and became dean of the College of Science at San Diego State University.</p><p>Sierra's great-grandfather, Don Short Sr., graduated from high school two years early and became a civil engineer.</p><p>Ironically, Sierra will never earn a high school diploma because she is skipping straight to college. Mary Baldwin accepts gifted students before they earn diplomas.</p><p>Family members discussed the pros and cons of Sierra leaving for college and decided she could thrive there.</p><p>In the end, it was Sierra's decision. She wanted to go. It is, Sierra noted, a dream come true.</p><p>As she awaits her new adventure, Sierra is reading Richard Dawkins' “The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution.”</p><p>■ ■ ■</p><p>Margaret Bivans, associate director of early college admissions at Mary Baldwin, said the 70 PEG students make up slightly less than 10 percent of the student body.</p><p>Bivans said the school carefully analyzes each PEG applicant to determine if they will be a good fit for the school.</p><p>Test scores actually are not the main admissions factor. Many exceptional gifted students do not have perfect academic records. Some have even had disciplinary issues, and a few have ended up in alternative schools.</p><p>Bivans said many exceptionally gifted students are so bored in traditional middle school programs they underachieve and often have disciplinary problems.</p><p>“In the gifted world, these students often act out when they are under-challenged,” said Bivans, who graduated from Mary Baldwin in 2010.</p><p>The Short family says Sierra gets extremely frustrated at school if she is not learning something new. When she fails to get enough intellectual stimulation, she gets home from school and heads straight for the computer to search for stimulating reading material.</p><p>Research has shown that learning is what drives exceptionally gifted students. If a student is not pushed into higher grades, he or she becomes disconnected and socialization suffers.</p><p>According to the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, studies show that acceleration — skipping grades — has led to positive results for gifted students.</p><p>Miraca U.M. Gross, a known researcher on the subject, wrote an article in the winter of 2000 titled “Understanding Our Gifted.”</p><p>The research revealed that gifted students who were not accelerated, or moved up a grade or two, often underachieved to a point where, paradoxically, they had to be retained a grade.</p><p>By contrast, gifted children who were radically accelerated registered higher motivation and reported “that pressure to underachieve for peer acceptance” diminished greatly.</p><p>The Florida Department of Education has examined the issue and has included a document about “Acceleration of Gifted Students” on its website.</p><p>It states, among other things, that educators need to find ways to accelerate the curriculum for gifted students, who achieve much more when challenged and are happier because they are learning.</p><p>■ ■ ■</p><p>Mary Baldwin College officials understand that young girls need to socialize with students their own age. To that end, the school has PEG socials with Virginia-area military academies and boarding schools.</p><p>Sierra said she went to middle school dances and gatherings, but she did not go to the homecoming dance at Forest.</p><p>Sierra said while she will enjoy socials with students her own age, she is most intrigued about socializing with other gifted students from around the world.</p><p>Bivans said the girls are also dependent on Mary Baldwin staff. After all, they can't even drive; how will then get to orthodontist and doctor appointments, or even a store to buy supplies?</p><p>The girls all have an 11 p.m. curfew. They are housed in a secure dorm with six adult resident advisers.</p><p>“The girls can participate in any part of college life,” said Bivans. Some join the college's Division III sports teams, and many end up as officers on the Student Government Association board.</p><p>The annual cost for a PEG student is: $28,000 for tuition, $8,500 for housing and a $1,200 PEG fee.</p><p>Like nearly every PEG in the program, Sierra gets a $16,500 federal merit scholarship. Teresa Short said scholarships and the Florida Pre-Paid college program cover the rest of the tuition, leaving the family to pay for housing and the PEG fee.</p><p>“The average grade-point average for a PEG in their first year is 2.5,” Bivans said.</p><p>Bivans said out of every 30 PEGs who join each year, only two do not make it the entire year. About three more drop out after freshman year or during sophomore year, usually after turning 16. Some choose to attend college closer to home.</p><p>Roughly 24 of the 30 freshmen end up graduating from Mary Baldwin.</p><p>■ ■ ■</p><p>T.J. Forero, 15, of Raliegh, N.C., is finishing her first year as a PEG. She plays on the school soccer team as well.</p><p>T.J. said her advice to Sierra is to properly manage her time.</p><p>“I wasn't expecting classes to be as hard as they are,” she said.</p><p>Twins Alora and Brittan Wogsland, 15, of Nashville, Tenn., cautioned Sierra to never tell the older students she is a PEG. Some of the older students treat PEGs badly, often using the smarter ones for free tutoring and test help.</p><p>Some older girls just don't like the young girls because they get so much support from Mary Baldwin staff during their first two years.</p><p>“But a lot of the (traditional students) are nice,” Brittan said. “Whatever you do, don't let it get to you.”</p><p>“Many of the PEGs want to try to blend in on campus,” Bivans noted.</p><p>Brittan said most PEGs are too focused on school to really miss their family and friends back home. Plus, with today's technology — Twitter, Facebook and cellphones — family and friends are always within reach.</p><p>Bivans remembered that when she was a traditional undergraduate she never knew that her lab partner was a PEG until one night at the library. It was 11:15 p.m. and the girl yelled “I missed my curfew” and ran toward the PEG dormitory.</p><p>Bivans said most of the PEGs are treated like any other student.</p><p>■ ■ ■</p><p>Sierra said she will miss the family dog — Zorro, an Australian shepherd — the most.</p><p>Her biggest fear is that she will no longer be the brightest 14-year-old at her school and will feel like she is only average.</p><p>But she is excited to go learn. She believes she is ready. Sierra discusses issues like an intellectual twice her age.</p><p>“I wouldn't let her go unless I was positive that she was mature and responsible,” Teresa Short said.</p><p>Greg, Sierra's father and hunting partner, said he may have had a different opinion if not for the secured dorms.</p><p>Since Sierra is an avid hunter, she hopes she is not ostracized. She has killed squirrels.</p><p>“After all, our (Mary Baldwin College's) mascot is Gladys the Fighting Squirrel,” Sierra said with a laugh. “I think it will be fun.”</p><p>Though sad to see his daughter leave, Greg Short knows it is best that she reach her potential.</p><p>“You know when some parents talk about how their teenager thinks they know it all?” he asked. “Try living with one that actually does know it all.”</p><p>Contact Joe Callahan at 867-4113 or joe.callahan@ocala.com. Follow him on Twitter at JoeOcalaNews.</p>